Tuesday, April 14, 2009

April 11-12, 2009 Chase Summary




Target Area(s): Eastern TX (Tyler to Lufkin) / North Central TX (Wichita Falls to Abilene)

Chase Summary: Steve, Kenzie, Kayla and I outfitted the Malibu Maxx on Saturday morning and prepared to depart Cameron around 12 p.m. with a destination of Dallas, TX. Models indicated SPC would likely go with a moderate risk in the East Texas area for Easter Sunday. The girls wanted a chase a ways from home so we decided what the heck.

The Flint Hills in KS was burning when we went through. Hate to estimate the amount of acres burned, but it will be pretty later this spring. Ate dinner in OK, did somebody say Braum's?????

Stopped by Norman, OK at the National Weather Center and took a few photos. Funny thing...Garmin GPS and Microsoft Streets and Trips led us astray twice on our trip....hmmmmm.

Arrived in Dallas and stayed at the Super 8 off of I-35 around 11:30 p.m. Stayed up for the latest model data and began to wonder if we had driven all that way for nothing. We were not impressed with the ongoing MCS over west TX, nor the forecasted moisture for the system in East TX. Started paying a little more attention to the cold core setup in North TX. Thanks to Chris Rice, stormchaselive.com, for his input and nowcasting.

Left Dallas around 11 a.m. and drove to Wichita Falls, TX. This was our only play of the trip as far as we were concerned. Got there a little after 1 p.m. and had to take the girls and Steve to WHATABURGER. You can't go to TX and not eat at a WHATABURGER can you?!?!? Spent about an hour eating and Chris called and told us we were in the center of a MD issued by SPC.

Cool....game on as we could see the CU field off to the west and southwest.....marginal day, but it was fun with the girls no matter if we saw a storm or not!Looked at the RUC, satellite and radar trends. We picked our cell and followed it from its infancy stage to its march across Archer, Clay and western Montague Counties. Ok structure and quarter size hail. Some unorganized, broad rotation so we stayed to the SE of the cell and kept poking our nose in to see if there was action on the business end. No luck!!!! Spent 2 1/2 hours on the cell and not even a decent wall cloud or rotation. The storm did produce "hen egg" size hail as it intensified and entered Montague County, TX.

At 6:15 p.m. we decided to pull off the cell and head for home. I told Steve it would produce a tornado as soon as we pulled off of it and he agreed, he added if we stay with it nothing would happen other than what we had already seen. Well you guessed it....at 7:13 p.m. it produced a tornado in Montague County, TX near Nocona....the only SPC tornado report for the entire US on Sunday......go figure.....Got home around 2:45 a.m. and to work by 8 a.m. A marginal day, but a fun time to get away with family and friends. 1,380 mile storm chase...until the next time!!!!

2009 CHASE STATS
through April 12, 2009

Chases: 3


States Chased: OK, KS, NE, TX
Busts: 1
Tornadoes: 1
Tornado Days: 2
Miles: 2,255
Largest Hail: 2.00"
Best Chase: April 4, 2009, SE NE
Funnest Chase: April 11-12, 2009, TX
Worst Chase: March 23, 2009, SE KS